Safety ensuring in the implementation of new technologies for tunneling and production faces

Introduction. New technologies and high-capacity equipment provide the intensification of technological processes in drifting and working faces that leads to changes of dust and aerodynamic processes that as a rule are not able to emphasize modern methods of explosion safety control in coal mines. Thus the process of introducing new technologies faces a number of features that require the development of new approaches of solving the safe mining issues in practice. One of these issues is the significant amount of organic aerosol formation, that is not measured by modern methods of explosion safety control in coal mines, but its presence in a methane-air environment can significantly shift the ignition threshold and significantly increase the rate of pressure rise during an explosion. Research methods and materials. Authors method of determination level of dust formation with special devices consisting of two filters placed vertically and horizontally in special well-room and distributed in several mine workings profile perimeter contours is proposed. Research results. As a solution the authors proposed a method for the rapid determination of the level of deposited dust in the mine workings that allows to prevent its possible explosion. Also schemes of special devices placement for measuring the level of dust formation at the sides of the mine workings are given. Using the prototype of multifunctional mechanized walking support developed by the authors in combination with high-performance combines the risks arising from the introduction of technologies for high-speed spilling of underground mining and mining of difficult coal reserves are demonstrated. The assessment of mining-geological and technological risks of stopping the technological process during the introduction of new technologies was made, a method of assessment the components that impact the risk of explosion of a dust-methane-air mixture in mine workings was developed. Discussion. Based on the identified risks of stopping the technological process the authors recommend taking into account technological aspects that may lead to accidents or incidents related both to the design feature of new types of high-performance equipment and to the sequence and duration of the stages of the main technological processes of disintegration and transportation of the recaptured rock mass. Conclusion. Interval of performing events of making mine workings safe is determined for preventing risks of explosion of a dust-methane-air mixture during coal-face work with high-performance equipment based on author’s methods of measuring determination level of dust formation Resume. As a result it is concluded that the effective introduction of new technological processes is impossible without accurate and operational control of the dust formation level in mine workings that is especially important with constantly increasing pounding on drifting and working faces. However, the experience of practical testing the authors method shows that it is necessary to investigate an additional research of the mechanism of dust formation and its nanoscale component for a reliable assessment of the coal dust explosive index and its influence to ignition process and risks of explosion of a dust-methane-air mixture.